On September 11, 2001, I stood on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River and watched the World Trade Center disappear. Years later, my work in construction would bring me back to the same ground-to help build what came next.

I can still see the Towers on the eastern horizon.

I can see them across the Hudson River, standing tall against the New York skyline. I can see the smoke rising from one of them. I can see the second airplane approaching. And I can still remember the disbelief, fear, and sinking feeling of helplessness that followed.

September 11 began as an ordinary workday for me. I was working on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail project on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, close enough to the river that we had an unobstructed view of Lower Manhattan. Nothing about that morning suggested that history was about to change.

I took a coffee break at a nearby food mart. When I got back to the worksite, I noticed smoke coming from one of the towers. My first thought was an electrical failure. My second was that a small plane-Teterboro Airport wasn’t far away-might have crashed into the building by accident. I had no reason to imagine anything worse, let alone the idea of a well-planned, nefarious plot against America that was later revealed.

I was living in New York City at the time, and my parents and family were at my apartment that morning. I called home to ask my father if the news had said anything about the smoke coming from the city’s Manhattan side. He told me there was nothing of that sort on any of the news channels and that I did not need to worry. So, I went back to work, with the specter of smoke billowing from the high-rise building in the city’s financial district.

A few minutes later, everything changed. I saw a second airplane approaching the other tower.

My mind struggled to process it. Oddly, what surfaced was a childhood memory-an episode from a Mandrake the Magician comic book, with a giant magnet pulling everything around it into destruction. It was a strange thing to think of, but in that surreal moment, it was the only frame my mind could reach for.

Then the panic started. Workers around me began shouting, “We are under attack!” People scattered in every direction.

I walked to the bank of the Hudson and stared across at the towers. My mind went blank. There was no television nearby, no explanation, no way to understand what I was witnessing. I sat down and took a deep breath. For 15 or 20 minutes, I stayed almost frozen. Then I finally asked myself: Now what?

Trapped Across the River

All access into New York City had closed. The Holland Tunnel, near my worksite, was shut down. My apartment was in Queens, far from Lower Manhattan, and I tried to tell myself that my family was probably fine. But I didn’t know.

I started walking to my car through streets full of people running in panic. Then, around 10:30, I heard a tremendous noise and looked up to see that one of the towers had collapsed. A massive cloud of dust rose into the sky. I was alone. There was no one beside me to explain it, only the sight of a building that had stood there minutes earlier-now gone, buried in rubble and a thick plume of smoke and dust.

I got in my car and drove south on Route 1-9. Near the Pulaski Highway, traffic suddenly stopped drivers and passengers staring back toward Manhattan. That’s when I understood: the second tower had fallen too. People were crying. Traffic sat still for nearly an hour before it finally began moving again.

I made it to downtown Newark, where people had gathered around televisions. For the first time, I saw what had actually happened. It looked like a scene from a horror movie. It wasn’t. And just across the river was the place I had been watching only hours before, now flattened, leaving an apparent gap in the city skyline.

I remembered that my sister-in-law had an apartment nearby. So, I drove there and rang the bell. She and her family were startled to see me-they’d already heard that I might be somewhere in the area. I called home immediately to tell my family I was safe.

With the routes into the city still closed, I stayed at my sisters-in-law for two or three days-the longest days I can remember. When I finally made it home and saw my family, there wasn’t much to say. We were together. I was alive. They were safe. That was enough.

A Changed City

The New York I returned to was not the city I had known. Some subway service had resumed, but life remained disrupted. People on the streets looked frightened and uncertain. Lower Manhattan was sealed off; I couldn’t get past 14th Street. Fine, white-gray dust covered everything, and the air was hard to breathe.

The physical destruction was enormous. So was the emotional change. I wanted to help and tried to volunteer, but I couldn’t get anywhere near where help was needed.

For some time following the planes slamming into the two landmark buildings in the city’s business district, there was a conspicuous vacuum of information surrounding the incident. Immediately, all sorts of stories motivated by conspiracy theories and racial prejudice started swirling around in local public discourse as well as in the media and political conversation. One of the main theories that circulated rapidly was that the events at the Twin Towers might have been a coordinated attack by some terrorist organization, and that the Muslim faith might have been at its center.

As a South Asian man, I also noticed the phenomenon-a palpable fear and suspicion directed at anyone perceived to be Muslim or Middle Eastern. The attacks had left behind not just rubble, but mistrust between communities. It struck me how far the damage of a single act of violence could travel, well beyond the people it directly hit.

It took a long time a year, maybe two-before anything like normal life returned to my city. But my connection to the World Trade Center wasn’t over.

Returning to Ground Zero

Because I worked in construction, my career eventually brought me back to the site. Sometime after the attacks, my office sent me there for a minor work visit, and standing on the ground where the towers once stood gave me a different understanding of the enormity of it all. On September 11, I had watched it from across the river. Now I was standing where they had fallen—and only then did the scale of it really sink in.

Years later, around 2009, I became professionally involved in the construction of the new World Trade Center, including work connected to Tower One. There was something I still find hard to put into words about that—having watched the original towers fall and then having a small hand in what rose in their place. The same skyline that once stood for shock and grief was slowly becoming something else: a symbol of determination.

The Memory That Remains

Even now, when work brings me back to assess the site, my mind goes straight back to that morning in 2001. The smoke. The second plane. The shouting. Sitting down because I couldn’t process what I was seeing. Being stuck in New Jersey while my family was across the river. Watching the second tower fall from a stopped highway. The television screens in Newark. Seeing my family’s faces three days later. I still remember it just like it was yesterday.

But the strongest memory isn’t of the destruction. It’s of what came after.

Years after I watched the towers fall, I came back as a construction professional and watched a new one rise, with a majesty that matched its predecessor. That changed how I think about this place. It isn’t only where a tragedy happened. It’s also where people showed what resilience looks like.

With the determination and commitment of our townspeople and countrymen and women, our city is back on the road to progress. I feel an enormous sense of pride in being part of this project of resilience and reaffirmation of the American spirit.

September 11 taught me how quickly an ordinary morning can turn into a pivotal moment in a nation’s history. It taught me what family is worth, how fragile life is, and how much it matters to help each other in times of crisis, when nothing makes sense. And it taught me that rebuilding isn’t only about steel and concrete. Sometimes it means restoring confidence. Sometimes it means bringing people back together. Sometimes it simply means standing on ground where something was lost and believing that something worth having can rise there again.

Now, every time I go back to the World Trade Center, I think of the man who stood on the New Jersey side of the Hudson on September 11, 2001, staring across the water in disbelief. And I think of the construction worker who came back years later to help build what came next.

The view has changed. The skyline has changed. But the memory stays with me: I watched the towers disappear. Years later, I watched a new one rise in their stead. And every time I see it, I’m reminded that even after the darkest day, there’s always a reason to rebuild.

I would like to end this monologue with a note of gratitude and pride. I am grateful to those who stepped up in a time of need and helped our country and community heal and rebuild. Those first responders-the firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and countless other volunteers who stepped forward and put themselves in harm’s way simply to ensure that our society would not fall with the fall of the Twin Towers.

A salute to those heroes who proved to the world the essence of that Confucian pronouncement: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

09/11/2026